To really remove deleted messages from disk, you have to compact your folders using File->Compact all folders (by default, this will also happen every time you exit KMail).
However, there's a know bug that made it into the release of KDE 2.2.0 (KMail 1.3): sometimes folders don't get compacted anymore, neither manually nor automatically. Here's a workaround: edit the ~/.kde/share/config/kmailrc file, search for all occurrences of “Consistent=false” and replace them with “Consistent=true” (KMail must not be running while you are doing this). This bug will be fixed in KDE 2.2.1 which will probably be released in September 2001.
Exit KMail, make a backup of ~/.kde/share/config/kmailrc, then open it with an editor and add e.g. folders=/home/username/.mail to the “[General]” section. Then move all your existing folders (including the hidden index files) to the new location. The next time you start KMail it will use /home/username/.mail instead of /home/username/Mail. Note that KMail will lose its filters if you change the mail directory's location but forget to move your existing folders.
This happens if you have Delete mail from server deselected and your POP3 server doesn't support the UIDL command. There's currently no workaround besides selecting Delete mail from server. A more detailed explanation can be found in this mailing list post.
You can find a list of submitted bugs at bugs.kde.org. Note that not all these bugs are valid, all in all we think that KMail is now a very good piece of software.
6.15 Can I use two different version of KMail at the same time? Can I go back from a current version of KMail to an older one?
You can only run one instance of KMail at once. We recommend also to stick to a certain version and not switch back and forth between different versions. Downgrading to an older version might cause problems, e.g. because the index file formats might have changed. Upgrading should never be a problem.
No. However, you can handle them using a filter, which is described in this posting to the mailing list.
6.18 When I try to set a folder to be mailing list-aware, it does not do anything when receiving an email from the list.
Associating a folder with a mailing list has nothing to do with filtering the mailing list messages. You have to add a new filter rule manually. However, once you associated a folder with a mailing list you can use Message->Reply List... or Message->New message... and the mailing list address will be set to the To: field.
Yes, but it's important to do it the right way or you might lose mail. In order to use procmail and KMail you need to set up KMail so that it will fetch new mail from the spoolfiles in which procmail drops your mail. Do not set up procmail to deliver mail in a KMail folder, this cannot work.
For each procmail spoolfile, you then need to create an account from which KMail will fetch new mail. You also need to make sure you specify the right lockfile name for this account. When setting up an account, KMail will do some minimal parsing on your procmail file, and will try to list every spoolfile it has found, and also the lockfiles next to the "procmail lockfile" item. procmail lets the user specify lockfiles in three different ways, so there's no way to establish a correspondence between the spoolfiles and lockfiles. So it's really up to you to make sure you specify the right lockfile for each spoolfile.
KMail provides a simple and easy to use interface for basic functions of these programs. Still you should understand how these programs work and what might make their use insecure. Some important issues:
You really should test if encryption works before you use it. KMail relies on PGP/GnuPG's error strings, which often change between different versions.
Trusting a foreign public key without checking it is no good idea.
KMail will not encrypt messages with an untrusted (unsigned) public key if you use PGP. If you use GnuPG KMail will encrypt messages with untrusted public keys.
As most other mail clients, KMail can encrypt your messages, but not your attachments. You have to encrypt them manually before you attach them.
6.22 How do I have to set up KMail to use (i.e. read and write) messages with non-Latin1 characters?
In the Appearance/Fonts section of the Configure KMail... dialog, select the correct Character set for the message list and the folder list. If unicode (iso10646-1) is available, you should choose it. In case messages are still not shown correctly, you can always try other settings from the Message->Set Encoding menu. For writing messages, go to Composer/Charset and configure the default charset you want to use for your own mails.
See the section Using other Mailbox files With KMail.
Simply create a symlink in your ~/Mail directory using ln -s /somewhere/Mail/mymailboxfile ~/Mail/remote. When you start KMail you will see a new folder with the name remote that contains the mails in your remote folder. If you want to add a whole remote mail directory use ln -s /somewhere/Mail ~/Mail/.remotedir.directory. For that case you also need to create a new empty folder named remotedir with KMail. The folder remotedir will then contain all remote mailbox folders as subfolders.
If your POP3 server runs an ssh daemon, you can use ssh to tunnel your POP3 connection using the following command:
ssh -L 110:127.0.0.1:110 user@host
Modify your KMail configuration to fetch the mail via POP3 from localhost and ssh will tunnel the connection for you. You need to be root to execute this command. Alternatively, change the first port number, i.e. the first occurrence of 110, to something above 1024 and configure KMail to use that port.
KMail does not lock the files in ~/Mail.
To avoid the risk of losing mail if using a local account it is necessary to ensure that KMail uses the same type of locking as your mail delivery agent.
There are five different locking options you can use:
Mutt dotlock and Mutt dotlock privileged will both use a small utility that comes with mutt called mutt_dotlock. Mutt dotlock can be used in the same way as the Procmail lockfile option, with the same limitation with regards to the /var/spool/mail/ folders. However, the Mutt dotlock privileged option can create lock files in the /var/spool/mail directory. mutt_dotlock is a setgid program and this option will run it in setgid mode. Please note that these options will only work if mutt is installed on your system.
Procmail lockfile will use a small utility that comes with procmail called lockfile. You can use this if your mail folder is in a directory where you have write permissions. This will not work on your /var/spool/mail/user file in most cases. It will create .lock files on your account when KMail is checking for new mail. Please note that this will only work if procmail is installed on your system.
FCNTL: the default option will use the fcntl() system call.
If you don't want to use any locking, the none option is what you want. However, there are risks of losing mail when no locking is used.
KMail will ask you for the location of your signature file if you have checked the option Automatically append signature in the Composer tab of the Configure KMail... dialog, but you have not specified a signature file in the Identity tab. You should either specify a signature file, select Use signature below, or deselect Automatically append signature.
First you should check if your Linux®/BSD/whatever distribution can do this for you. It probably has already been set up during installation.
If that's not the case, you may want to have a look at the Mail Queue HOWTO or at UCT Linux User's group page on configuring sendmail for Dial-up connections.